Red
by Sleep-Not
Summary: One-shot of a scene with, I guess, Gojyo at the centre. At the centre of a blood bath is where the others find him, that is to say.


Red

In the forest, the ground is covered with leaves and twigs and dark moss. The trees weep their leaves, red, orange and brown, into the wind and with each new gust. The tears are blown up into the air to form a sight-obscuring curtain before falling, lifeless now, to coat the earth. In the forest, the only colour in the air, in the trees and on the ground, is red.

Keep walking, eventually there is a break in the trees but the leaves are being blown by such violent gusts that for a moment the view is blocked and all there is to see is red. Then the leaves are forgotten as the wind lets them fall once again, and all there is to see is red.

In the clearing, the ground is covered with limbs and heads and dead bodies. The pale morning sky sheds no light on how this slaughter came to pass... on the ground are the bodies of the slain, great flaques of blood, and at the centre, a rock. On the rock someone is sitting. As motionless as the rock, as the bodies, as the blood. He sits on the rock and to look at him, all you can see is red. He has red hair and red eyes and he sits on the rock oblivious to his surroundings, or perhaps, hyperaware of them. There is no movement in him, but in one hand, the cigarette he is holding trembles like a leaf on the verge of being ripped from its tree by the wind. But in the clearing, the wind dies, and lies bleeding on the ground with the rest. His hands are red, and so are his arms right up to the elbows where the blood that soaks them peters out into random splashes. None of the blood is his own. 

When they reach him, one faster than the other two (because he doesn't mind bounding carelessly through the mess, while the others make their way carefully round and over the corpses), the man on the rock doesn't register their presence at all, despite the swift one's loud, childish and worried demands to know what happened. He lifts the shaking cigarette to his pale lips and takes another puff, and the smoke he breathes seems to sink rather than rise. The clearing is such a heavy place to sit in, and such a light place to fight in, except at night, during the dark before dawn. 

His weapon, a shaku jou, lies at his feet where it was dropped, it is red with the blood of his enemies. The shaku jou was the only thing to make light in the night as he fought past exhaustion and pain and, eventually, fear but it was not a light he cherished. The light of a flashing weapon moving to his every command, in his talented hands, killing. Creating bright sprays of blood in the air until all he could see was the flashing of the weapon and the redness that obscured his vision, until he couldn't distinguish between his own eyes' rage and the mists of blood.

None of their efforts awake him from his thoughts, not the monkey-like one's loud voice nor his monocled friend's concerned calling.

„Gojyo," they say, „Gojyo." But he doesn't hear them, not until Sanzo with his usual forthrightness impatiently plucks the cigarette from his shaking hand and crushes it out in one of the several puddles that litter the ground, red. 

Then, finally, he looks up, confused, and wonders at how they came to be at his side so suddenly, and at the way the light has changed and time has passed. He doesn't utter a word though, and lets them guide him away to their warm rooms at an inn nearby that he doesn't remember checking into at all, not a word, and Hakkai says he's in shock and Sanzo orders Goku to carry him when they realise he's too exhausted to walk on his own.    

When they are gone, the wind finally encroaches onto the clearing, bringing dead leaves with it to cover the slain in a makeshift shroud. The swaying of  the bare trees the only witness to the wind's actions. 

In the forest, there are black trees under the white sky. But everywhere else is (soaking into the earth, in the slowly rising sun, the remains in the clearing, and in the hearts of men) red.

End

Author's note: Hi, I feel a little guilty about posting this, knowing so little about Saiyuki as I do, but the scene popped into my head (I think _very_ visually) and it just had to come out. Anyone one who wants to write a follow up or a prequel to how Gojyo ended up fighting a horde of youkai on his own in the middle of the night feel free!

Oh, and I apologise for the absolutely terrible shortness of this one-shot!


End file.
